What show? Was it good?

To be fair, the unofficial word has always been that our guys are doing a little more than what a civilian would consider training when they go on joint training missions in Central and South America. They aren't officially supposed to take part in any fighting but it's common knowledge that part of the faith in a partnership and the skills host forces have been taught is for the special forces guys training them to go on a few missions with them.

The reputation from those operations is a large part of why cartels don't want to bother feds or tourists anymore. They know if they end up on Uncle Sam's list then no amount of sovereignty is going to stop tier 1 forces from coming for them. Even if it has to be the CIA's Special Activities Group. (The guys who actually do "if you get caught, we don't know you" types of missions)

This is a large part of why a Cartel apologized for shooting tourists and handed over 5 members in 2023. They did not want to be on that list.

Now before anyone comes in here and says Trump's plan is no big deal, the entire calculus of this situation changes when the cartel leaders become indiscriminate targets. The status quo right now is a bit like old Chicago's legends, only Americans "in the game" are fair targets. We turn our heads and in return the cartels leave most Americans alone. That changes the second they go into self defense mode. They're going to take hostages, they're going to blow shit up in border communities, they're going make it as painful as possible.

In short, this is a great way to create an insurgency in the US South West.

No, they didn't. The police, defense contractors, and private prisons won. The drugs are doing their job just fine.

We just elected an attempted insurgent!

If he tries to cut a deal with them it'll probably include Texas annexation 😬

He'll hand over the Mexican government to the Zetas in exchange for some empty promises.

It's a bit more complicated than most people realize. They know about Vietnam (loss), Iraq (win), and Afghanistan (loss). But there's also;

More recently -

• The Philippines (win),
• Lebanon (draw, objective achieved, but no decisive victory)
• Somalia (draw, transition government was not deposed, no decisive victory),

And through the years -

• The Indian Wars 1776-1923 (win, massive war crimes),
• US-Algiers (loss, impetus for creating the Navy),
• The Barbary Wars (win),
• Taiping Rebellion (Win),
• Kansas mini Civil War (1854, goes into actual Civil War, Abolitionist win)
• Second Opium war (win)
• Utah Secession (win),
• Mexican Civil War (win),
• Cortina War (win),
• Formosa Expedition (loss),
• Garza War (win),
• Las Cuevas War (win),
• Boxer Rebellion (win),
• Mexican Border War (win),
• Banana Wars 1912-1934 (win)
• Philippines Rebellion (win, but they do resurface for a modern conflict)

You can see why we were a tad over confident going into Vietnam and even afterwards we thought we just needed to make some adjustments to our tactics.

Been screaming that for years, now it's too late. The cartels got wise and diversified their portfolio. We can no longer pull their teeth by legalizing.

Indeed, FFS, just legalize all of it. The WOSD has been far more harmful than the drugs themselves. But moneyed interests definitely want them illegal.

Sorry to break it to you, but cartels are never gonna die off. They're not something that's currently happening in Mexico, they're the backbone of the Mexican economy and have been since the revolution war a hundred years ago.

More context: Cartels, although they weren't called that back then, are how the revolution war was financed. They basically rolled up into small towns and took everything that wasn't nailed down —including women— under the pretext that they needed it to "fight for freedom". When the revolution ended and they had no excuse to ransack villages anymore, they pivoted onto drugs. If drugs are legalized, they're just gonna pivot to something else. Right now, there's cartels who barely sell drugs and make most of their money through kidnappings and extortion.

Nah he's got that covered, hes going to charge us 25% more for all of them, destabilize the region further and wonder why the border issues increase instead of decrease, causing our international dealings to degrade further and respect to keep plummeting

Oh don't think for a second he plans to actually go after the real cartels. He just wants an excuse to kill random Mexicans.

After his orders to kill people we'll have news reports from actual Mexicans saying the people he order killed weren't drug dealers. And they'll be right.

Mar a Lago, it's Spanish 🤣

They're notorious liars.

if you hear or see words coming from them assume they are lies.

got me through covid pretty well.